Segmentation Fault: Core dumped..;-)

Iraq

Posted : April 11, 2006 at 1:37 pm [America/Los_Angeles]

Here is the brutal truth of where we are in Iraq today: After three years, more than $300 billion and thousands of U.S. and Iraqi casualties, we still do not have an Iraqi government or army that could hold together, without U.S. help. There is still no self-sustaining, democratizing Iraq. And even if we eventually get a national unity government there, it is not clear it will be able to reverse Iraq’s slide into sectarianism and militias. No one even knows anymore whether Iraqis in uniform work for the state or a militia.

The other day, the Iraqi blogger Riverbend, who writes for Salon.com, told of watching Iraqi TV when an Arabic message scrolled across the screen: “The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by [U.S.] coalition forces working in that area.” Riverbend’s translation: Many Iraqi security forces “are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.”

As someone who believes in the importance of building a progressive politics in Iraq, in the heart of the Arab world, it pains me to say this, but we are in real trouble there.

— Thomas Friedman, “Condi and Rummy”

- Anand

Category: US